When a forest fire burns the drainage in the miles above a lake, the next rains brings a sludge of mud, ash, soot, burned logs, etc. All kinds of crap wash down. It does it to the point that it can utterly choke a lake and any water delivery system coming from it.
In recreational lakes it’s a nuisance that takes a couple of years to clear out well. In a water supply lake its a much bigger likely problem.
Yeah, I know all about runoff contamination.
Do you believe in “actions have consequences”? Did not the SF liberal-weinies make it impossible to do control burns or clean-up logging that now have led to such forest fire threatening their water supply?
Their lack of (logical) planning does not constitute an emergency on my part.
I’m guessing their main concern for the water supply are the ashes and maybe gumming up the filters. One would think they would have self cleaning centrifugal filters in the intakes, but my guess is they don’t